Facebook: Oh no - they've taken away our free burgers

Hot on the heels of that unbelievably stinky anti-breastfeeding decision (very very bad marks, Mr Facebook) comes the latest bizarre move from the social networking site's head honchos. Which makes us ask, again, who on earth is making the decisions these days? Are they leaving it up to a magic 8 ball?

As I see it, yes. Photograph:greeblie/Flickr/Some rights reservedBurger King has been raising a few chuckles with an offer to give customers a free 'whopper' if they ditch ten Facebook friends - not in real life, but on Facebook. The result? The application prompted 82,771 people to remove 233,906 friends in under one week. You could say it's amazing that that many people were bothered about a free burger but hey - it's amusing.

You can see why Facebook could mildly object to that, because it is undoing the connections between people on that all-important social graph. So is that why Facebook banned the campaign?

No - they cited some random privacy term; apparently the application violated the terms of the site by notifying people when they were 'unfriended'.

"We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions," said Facebook's statement. "In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained."

This kind of intervention looks pretty heavy-handed. Couldn't Facebook have privately asked the developer at the ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, to tweak the application instead? Then again, Facebook does have a history of making bad decisions when it comes to handling stuff like this.

Disclaimer: I'm a vegetarian and have never actually eaten a burger, but in the name of solidarity...